Not Again!
by Helen West
Summary: A hurt-comfort story plus, set about two years after the pilot. Heyes suffers a familiar injury, but the results are totally different.
1. Chapter 1 corrected

A hurt/ comfort story plus. I have borrowed these characters with thanks and with no idea of violating copyright or making any money, but only to tell a story. The symptoms of the malady as portrayed are entirely fictional, arranged purely for creative purposes and not intended to hurt any sufferers. My apologies to those who wrote the original television scrip that inspired me to strike the victim with this malady. Let's just say that we know the actor in question could pull it off wonderfully! Most of the locations and institutions (not including bars or medical institutions) cited are real, but the people are invented. I have my own much darker story that replaces that pilot, as is reflected in this story. This story is dedicated to the teachers among our readers. You'll need to be very patient to find out why!

Just corrected chapter 1 typo.

Two dusty horses in worn western rig, a tall claybank dun and a stocky dark bay with a black head, were stumbling with weariness as they clattered up a rocky slope in the Flatiron Mountains. The sun was setting beyond the mountains to their right; it was getting hard for their two exhausted riders to see the way. The dark haired young man on the dun pushed his battered black hat back for a better view as he and his partner with wavy honey blonde hair pulled up, listening and peering into the dim distance behind them. They heard the faint echoes of rapid hoof-beats on stone. "Ah shit, that posse's still coming! Don't they know it's gettin' too dark to track? And too cold?!" Kid Curry, shivering even in his heavy fleece coat, addressed his exasperated rhetorical question to his partner in crime, and now in the search for amnesty, Hannibal Heyes.

"Tonight we'll be in a nice, warm cell if we don't move on - now! Come on, Kid. One more push before we find someplace to get out of the cold," said Heyes wearily, pushing his black hat back down onto his head.

"And where'll that be?" muttered the Kid sarcastically as the two former outlaws turned their horses' heads to the south and spurred on again. There was surely no promise before them of anything but a long, cold, dangerous ride in the rugged mountains with a determined posse on their tails. No matter how straight they had gone in the past two years, they could never seem to avoid the unwanted attention brought by the price of $10,000 on each of their heads, dead or alive.

The way was rough, rocky, and icy. The horses had to wade through occasional drifts of snow. Not five minutes after their brief pause Heyes felt his worn out horse slip on a patch of ice and stumble. He leapt off as it went down to its knees. The tall gelding scrambled to stand, but held his left foreleg up limply, bleeding. Heyes bent over the leg, feeling it. The horse threw its head up and grunted in pain. Heyes looked up at Curry, stricken. He had gotten close to this horse as they rode into town after town, and too often out again when someone had recognized them or seemed likely to. But far more than the welfare of the horse was on his mind. "Clay's not going on, Kid, not with me in the saddle! It's too dark – I can't see proper, but it's not good . . ." Heyes' voice was low and desperate. The pursuing posse was so close now that the pair of reformed outlaws couldn't talk aloud without risking being overheard in the echoing mountains. "No way can beat that bunch back there if we got to ride double!"

Curry looked around and pointed, eyebrows raised in question, to a rocky outcropping behind Heyes. There they could wait and be invisible from the trail. The Kid patted the gun tied down on his right hip. He asked, "What else can we do? When they catch up, if they come this way, we'll be waiting and we have more bullets than they have men. If we can get the jump on them . . . You know those guys'll take the first choice on 'wanted dead or alive.'" Heyes hesitated for an instant, and then nodded reluctantly. Murder was, and had always been, absolutely the last thing they wanted to do. The two second cousins never wanted to have anyone feel about them the way they felt about the men who had murdered their families two decades before. Of course, the sentence of hanging was also deeply unappealing. But it looked like it might be murder or death. Even if Curry's estimate of their pursuer's plans was wrong, they were due to serve twenty years in prison per count of armed robbery – and that was a lot of counts. Kid had lost track of how many, though he suspected that Heyes knew precisely.

Curry dismounted and helped Heyes to coax his injured horse behind the outcropping. Then both men mounted up on Curry's gelding, ready to ride if they had to. Heyes was in front and Curry up behind where he would be free to use his deadly skill with a six-gun to shoot at pursuers. Both men had their pistols ready in their hands and the horse stood parallel to the path so they would both have a clear shot when they ambushed their pursuers. They just hoped it wouldn't come to that.

In the distance, they heard the posse getting closer. But their pursuers were moving more slowly over the rough, icy terrain in the fast fading light. It was so dark now that Curry and Heyes could hardly see anything. The red-brown rocks began to look black and the snow caught between the rocks turned dark grey. They could hear the approaching men more and more clearly. When the posse was only a couple of hundred yards away the horses stopped. There was a quiet but vehement argument going on, evidently between those in favor of continuing the pursuit and the ones who wanted to turn back for the night. Heyes and Curry froze and strained to hear what was said. But their pursuers kept their voices too low.

At last, the hoof beats of five horses echoed off the rocks again. Which way where they going? Without looking out from behind the rock where they were hidden, Heyes and Curry could not be sure. They listened tensely.

Eventually the two could hear that the hoof beats of the posse were getting softer. Their pursuers were going back toward the north where they had come from. Heyes and Curry exhaled with relief, but they remained hidden and quiet. It could easily be a trap, and they could be seen or heard if they emerged from their hiding place too soon. After they had waited for a while the guys were getting chilled and impatient in the growing darkness. At last, Heyes urged their horse out from behind the rocks so they could see where the posse was. "There they go!" He whispered, pointing across a valley toward where a faint glimmer of the setting sun caught the distant retreating figures riding over the distant rocks before they were swallowed by shadows. The partners began to relax – at least the immediate threat was gone. Now they would just have to find that place out of the cold that Heyes had spoken of. He was already looking south and thinking about their route. Curry gazed after the retreating posse, from whom they heard the soft echo of arguing voices. Some of the posse members weren't leaving the chase of their $20,000 prey willingly. The posse emerged from the shadows for a moment as they routed around a peak. Curry saw a tiny speck of light as the setting sun glinted off the barrel of a gun that was waving around randomly. The muzzle flashed and a shot rang out. It ricocheted loudly before the posse disappeared into the distant shadows again.

At nearly the same moment that he heard the shot, Curry felt Heyes' head jerk back against his own. "Heyes!" the Kid cried, but his partner didn't answer. Heyes was out cold. It was all Curry could do to keep his partner's dead weight balanced in the saddle. For a shot fired at random and bouncing off a rock, it had hit with uncanny accuracy. Curry steadied his partner with his left arm and felt around the man's head delicately with his right hand. It didn't take long for him to find the blood coursing from under the long dark hair on the left side of Heyes' face. The wound was a deep diagonal graze across the temple, about three inches long and plowed bloodily wide by the flattened bullet.

"Not again!" the Kid moaned. But yes, Heyes had been shot in the head, again. Curry felt sick to his stomach as he remembered the last time Heyes had caught a bullet in the head, more than a year before when they had been hunting mountain lions. Then they had been hunted themselves, by a serial murderer, outside a berg called Hollistown. This new wound seemed to be a bit deeper than the shallow but bruising graze Heyes has suffered before. Curry leaned his head against Heyes' back and listened. His partner's heartbeat was slow and faltering. If Jedediah Curry had ever prayed in his life, he prayed then. And slowly Heyes' heartbeat grew steadier and stronger. If he was going to die, it seemed that it wouldn't be right away. While keeping his unconscious partner balanced in the saddle, the Kid took off his bandana and clumsily bound up the wound. The improvised bandage didn't do much good. The long scalp wound was still bleeding all too much. The Kid was glad at least that he had been able to keep Heyes in the saddle – a fall onto the rocks would have been fatal and there was no way for Curry to dismount unaided without letting his partner fall.

The Kid's mind raced. Where could he go for help? They weren't too many miles from Boulder and Denver – he would have to be very careful where he went and who he met. Their Devil's Hole gang had struck the Merchants Bank in Denver only three years ago. There were some who would remember the gang and maybe even their faces. Heyes, as usual, had worked out the detailed plan of the Denver robbery. Curry didn't remember the exact routes Heyes had painstakingly mapped around these mountains. During this current scrambling ride away from a posse, the Kid had been counting on his partner to guide him. The only way out of this rocky place that Curry himself knew for sure led back to the north, where the boys had just come from and where the posse was now riding. If the boys met them, neither Curry nor Heyes would live out the night in freedom. No help lay that way. But going in any other direction would be just random wandering in the rocks.

There was one other option that Curry could think of. He looped his lariat around Heyes and himself a few times to help hold the unconscious man in the saddle. Then he held Heyes with his right arm and felt in front of his partner with his left hand, groping for the reins. "Come on Blackie!" he said urgently to the horse, "Take us home!" There was no home anywhere near, but horses were said to be able to find a good place, if you asked them. Curry and Heyes had called on horses to do this more than once and they had always come through. The dark gelding stood for a moment, sniffing the air. Then he began to walk, slowly and uncertainly, swinging his head back and forth. He stumbled on loose rocks, weary under the double load. Curry frantically fought to keep Heyes safely in the saddle. He worried as Blackie scrambled and paused and scrambled again. Soon the Kid could tell that his horse was as lost as he was. Blackie wasn't used to leading - he usually followed Heyes' horse, Clay.

Clay whickered softly in the dark. The claybank dun was limping heavily, but he headed confidently to the southeast, taking the lead just as he had done when Heyes was in the saddle. Clay evidently did know where he was going. It was a good thing, because the sun was gone now and the slender moon overhead was not enough for Curry to see anything beyond the wounded man in front of him. The night vision of the horses was all he had to go on.

Clay and Blackie walked slowly in tandem along narrow mountain trails. Pine boughs and stone outcroppings scraped past them in the dark. Curry held Heyes in his arms and now and then leaned forward to listen to his partner's heartbeat. It stayed too faint for comfort, but steady. After a few hours Curry was fighting sleep, struggling not to slide off his perch behind the saddle. He came back to himself to find that Clay had led them onto a dirt road. Soon Curry could see lights in the distance and they were in a town. The Kid heard a tinny piano playing and voices from a saloon that would be the only business still opened. "Thanks, boys!" The Kid said softly to the horses. "I'll find someone to look after you guys as soon as I get a doctor for Heyes." Had Heyes been awake he might have teased the Kid for talking to the horses like they understood, but Heyes was far from conscious.

Curry rode down the dark street toward the lights and voices. Clay walked beside the Kid's horse, just as if he had had a rider in the saddle. The Kid leaned forward to check Heyes' heart beat just in time to hear it skip once, twice. "Christ, don't fail now! We're almost there!" the Kid moaned. He didn't dare urge his horse to trot – if Heyes fell or was shaken around he was sure to die. Getting to the saloon was the longest, slowest ride Curry ever remembered. Gradually, Heyes' heart steadied again, but Curry didn't trust it.

As they reached the front of the saloon, Curry heard a man's slurred shout, "Hey, mister, you alright?"

The Kid leaned around Heyes' sagging form and shouted down to the inebriated cowboy in the street below. "No, he ain't! Is there a doctor in town? Man's shot bad – in the head!"

The cowboy in the street shouted back into the saloon. A dozen poured out the swinging doors, knocking the stumbling drunk off his feet. Curry unwound the rope that had held Heyes in the saddle and soon the men from the saloon had gotten the injured man off the horse and were carrying him in the door as gently as they could. Curry wearily dragged his far leg over the saddle, dropped to the ground, tied up his horse, and followed the group carrying his partner. A slender blonde woman in a modest brown dress joined the crowd of men. They called to her - "Miss Christy, man's been shot! Shot in the head!" Someone shouted. "Jake's gone to get the doc!"

The woman in brown seemed young, but she took charge. Her clear voice rang out as more revealingly dressed dance hall girls came to join the throng: "Here, get him into the back room, on the bed - there. Careful, don't drop him! Here, let's get these pillows under him and keep his head up. Peggy, bring me some clean water and a towel. Somebody get me some extra pillows from the store room. Now, you guys go back out front and leave us alone. Peggy and the doc and I can handle this." A petite brunette dance hall girl ran in with a basin and towel for Miss Christy, who bent over Heyes and blotted the bloody wound. Her gentle hands seemed at odds with her strong, confident voice. She looked up at the Kid. He was startled to see how sad her blue eyes looked.

Curry grabbed off his hat and introduced them with their standard aliases, "Miss, I'm Thaddeus Jones and this here's my partner, Joshua Smith, been shot. I'm mighty grateful to you for your kindness." Curry hoped desperately that she wouldn't ask how his partner had come to be shot. He had lies ready, but doubted she would believe them. Miss Christy seemed to have a good head on her shoulders – maybe too good.

Soon the doctor arrived at the run. The thin, graying man with a medical bag in his hand bent over Mr. Smith and looked grave. He cut away the hair around the wound so he could work, then cleaned the wound and pulled the skin together with some stitches. It was only the skin he could mend at all; the frightening damage below he couldn't touch. The doctor tied a heavy bandage around Joshua's head to keep the wound safely covered. The doctor said to Mr. Jones and Miss Christy, "I don't have to tell you this is a bad wound. It's a miracle you got him here alive, mister. He may not make it. That's up to God, not me. All we can do is to keep him warm and still and quiet and watch him carefully. Keep his head up just the way it is, braced with pillows. Let me know instantly if he moves or wakes. Don't let him get up or move around if he does wake. I wish we knew more about brain injuries, but we know too little!"

Curry introduced himself to the doctor with his alias and learned the man's name was Doctor Grauer. Their hostess's name was Catherine Christy. The doctor's office was just a few doors down and he lived above the office, so it would be easy to get him if he were needed.

Curry left Miss Christy in charge and went out to look after the horses. It took a while to rouse anyone, but eventually a man who slept in the hay loft responded to the Kid's shouts and bangs on the livery stable door. The sleepy-eyed man bandaged up Clay's leg and said he would look after both horses. Clay's leg was cut up and strained badly. A little extra tip helped the Kid feel sure that the horses would get good care. But he was nervous – he didn't have much cash and doubted that his partner had much in his pockets to pay for the hotel stay for them both and medical care for Heyes.

Back at Christy's Hotel and Saloon the Kid was glad to find that Miss Christy had warmed some stew for him and given him a room just up the stairs from where Heyes was. The injured man was installed in Miss Christy's own bed in a little back room next to the kitchen. She smiled at Jones bleakly. He could see in her eyes that she held out as little hope for Mr. Smith as Mr. Jones did, but she wouldn't say it. "I'll watch him, Mr. Jones. Your friend will be warm and comfortable here. Don't you worry. You go and get some sleep – I can see you've had a real hard time."

Heyes lay so still and looked so pale that Kid could hardly stand to look at him, yet he stood and gazed down for a while, as if hoping that somehow Heyes would wake up and be fine. Curry was glad to see that Miss Christy had had another bed brought into the room and put it by where Heyes' slept so she could be near if the wounded man needed help. He thanked her so many times that she finally told him to stop and again urged him to go to his room and get some sleep. At last the Kid stumbled up the stairs and hardly got his boots off before he was asleep.

But nightmares disturbed Curry's sleep. He was fleeing from someone – all alone. He kept calling for Heyes but he got no answer.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day the Kid felt awkward hanging around the hotel, watching over Heyes and trying to stay out of the way of Miss Christy and the other employees: fat blonde Joe the bar tender and skinny bald Ted the piano player and the saloon girls. Christy's was in Louisville, Colorado. It was a mining town not far from Denver and Boulder. The miners and others passing through town gave the establishment plenty of business.

When Heyes had been shot in the head before, he had moaned and tossed and talked in his sleep. In fact, he had given away their real names before he woke. Now Heyes breathed shallowly and lay far too still under Miss Christy's warm quilt. A purple bruise had spread over the left side of the wounded man's face. Finally Curry, finding nothing else he could usefully do, went and played a few hands of poker in the saloon. He couldn't concentrate very well but held his own. He wondered if the men, knowing about his wounded partner, were cutting him a break. If they were, they were the first Curry had ever known to do such a thing. Poker after all, was poker.

The next two days seemed to stretch on forever, dull and tense except when Thaddeus helped Catherine Christy with dishes and other jobs around the place. She allowed as how friends called her Cat and she would be happy to have Mr. Jones as a friend. He wished he could ask her to call him Jed instead of Thaddeus. She didn't ask too many questions, but he learned her father had owned the hotel and saloon and had died only a few months before. They were short-handed at Christy's and often run off their feet. Cat Christy was glad to have Mr. Jones to help. The saloon was busy, but the hotel had several vacant rooms. Cat Christy said she would put up Smith and Jones as long as they needed to stay.

The Kid was terribly worried and not only by Heyes' injury. That afternoon the local sheriff happened into the hotel. The Kid got a surreptitious look at him and his heart almost stopped. He recognized the tall, lean man wearing a battered tin star. He was sure he did. He couldn't remember where or how – although it couldn't have been good. The bar tender called him Sheriff Wilde. The name rang a faint bell for Curry. He thought the sheriff might have been just a deputy when the Kid had encountered him before. The Kid just couldn't remember where he could have seen Sheriff Wilde and what had happened. Maybe Wilde had been part of the Denver heist posse?

When the sheriff dropped in to Christy's place after that the Kid avoided him, but he broke into a sweat every time. Would the sheriff recognize the Kid? Or what if that posse showed up? Or a bounty hunter? Or anyone who knew them? The whole town probably knew that a man was at Christy's who had shown up shot in the head. It would sure look suspicious. What could Curry do? He couldn't move Heyes and he couldn't leave him.

Curry fled to the back room where he watched over Heyes. The wounded man lay terribly still. His face was ghostly pale except where for a dark purple bruise across most the left side, extending down from the long bullet grazes. The Kid felt guilty about enjoying making friends with Cat Christy while Heyes hovered near death. Cat was very nice looking in an unglamorous way. She worked hard but enjoyed a good story. The Kid had a fund of adventures to tell about, although they required careful editing to keep from giving away his criminal past.

The second evening that Heyes had been lying in Cat Christy's bed, Curry bent over Heyes looking at him anxiously. He studied the dark circles under his partner's eyes and the massive bruise that was starting to fade to green and brown at the edges. The wounded man's breathing seemed stronger than it had been the day before. Heyes' hands and face twitched now and then. Without warning the brown eyes opened and blinked as Heyes took a hissing breath. It sounded like he was in pain, which the Kid didn't doubt. Heyes looked up at Curry and gave his partner a wry smile. Before the Kid could ask him how he felt, Heyes' eyes closed again and he felt deeply asleep.

Then the Kid remembered the doctor's directions. His boots pounded on the wooden floor as he ran to get Cat and to call for Dr. Grauer. The doctor came quickly and looked at Heyes while Cat and the Kid stood side by side near the bed. The Kid resisted the urge to put his arm around the slender young woman so near, the top of her sleek golden head just below the level of Curry's blue eyes. The doctor thought his patient seemed to be breathing better, but said he hoped the man would be awake soon so he could eat and drink, or he would start to lose strength. When he did wake and want something, the Doc cautioned Cat to stick with broth and tea at first and not much of it at a time. And she must not let Mr. Smith move or get up at all.

The doctor gave such a deep sigh as he left that it surprised the Kid. Surely it was clear that Heyes was better? Surely there wasn't any doubt that he would wake up? The doctor's face said what he wouldn't put into words – he wasn't at all sure about any of that.

The next evening the Kid was adjusting the covers on Cat's bed where his partner lay when Heyes opened his eyes again. This time they stayed opened and struggled to focus on the Kid's face. Curry smiled. "Heyes!" he said gladly, "How are you, partner?"

But this time Heyes didn't smile – his mouth was opened and his eyes were wide. He pulled back from the Kid, breathing hard. The Kid couldn't figure out what was going on – Heyes looked terrified! Heyes had known the Kid just the night before and now he was afraid of his own partner. The Kid asked with growing anxiety "Heyes, it's just me, Jed. What's wrong? You caught a bullet in the head, again, but you're going to be fine! Don't you remember me? What's wrong? What's wrong!?" But every word seemed to make Heyes more terrified and confused. The wounded man looked around in a panic and tried to climb out of bed. When the Kid held him down, Heyes struggled, twisting and kicking, although he was too weak and dizzy to put up a serious fight. He let out a frightened yell as he fell back onto the bed, panting. Cat heard the commotion and ran into the room. "What is it, Thaddeus?"

"I don't know, Cat. Joshua woke up acting real strange. He won't say a word. He's afraid of me! I don't understand." Heyes looked frightened of Cat, too, and dismayed to find out he wasn't wearing anything except a nightshirt in front of this strange lady. He felt his head, discovering the bandage over the place that hurt. Heyes lay weakly on the bed. His wide eyes darted uneasily around the room. He winced every time the Kid or Cat spoke, as if their voices hurt him somehow.

Cat sent a saloon girl down the street with a message and in minutes, Doc Grauer was there. He shooed Cat and the man he knew as Mr. Jones out of the room. The doctor was with Joshua for what seemed a long time to Cat and Thaddeus. They stood in the kitchen waiting and wondering. They could hear the doctor's voice, but not Smith's. Then all was silent until they heard a sharp ping answered by a wordless cry from the wounded man. Then there was silence again for minute after minute.

Finally the doctor walked slowly into the kitchen. "What on earth did that bullet do to the man, Doc?" asked Cat.

The doctor shook his head again sadly. "I don't know exactly, but he can't talk."

"He yelled like mad a minute ago," said Jones.

"It's not his voice – it's his mind. He can't talk and he can't understand a word said to him. His hearing is fine - I tested it. That bullet hit something vital." Cat and Thaddeus stood in shock. Without realizing it, their hands met.

"His mind? Has he gone crazy?" whispered Jones in dread.

The doctor sighed, "I guess it depends on what you call crazy. His mind isn't working like it should when it comes to talking and understanding, but he seems rational otherwise. Or he did once I got him calmed down a bit and stopped trying to talk to him. He's still very shaken up."

"Is he gonna get better? He'd better – Hey. . . he just lives to talk," Thaddeus said, almost forgetting to use his partner's alias in his concern.

"I don't know. I just don't know." The doctor sounded frustrated. "For the moment, don't say anything to him. Any talking agitates him dangerously. He knows he should understand, he used to understand, but now he can't. He's confused and frightened. He doesn't know what's happened or where he is or why he can't talk or understand. Just use gestures – he understands those. He's real weak and he's in pain, but if you go easy he should be alright, in time. Or his body should . . ."

"Can you help – help his mind, Doc?" asked the injured man's partner.

The doc shook his head. "I just don't know what we can do to help his mind get better, or if it can get better. Maybe he'll heal up on his own – or maybe not. I'm no neurologist! There has to be someone out there who knows more than an old country doctor like me. I'm going over to the telegraph office and send out some messages to doctors. I still have friends in hospitals back east – I studied in Boston. We'll find out what we can. Keep him still and give him something to eat and drink. You might try a shot of whiskey to help him sleep. But keep the alcohol to a minimum."

When the doctor left, Kid sat slumped at the kitchen table with his arms hanging limply. He was devastated. When they were on the run, for weeks in the wild plains and mountains, talking with Heyes and playing cards with him and singing old songs with him was about all that kept the Kid sane. Now all that was gone – at least for the moment. And he couldn't even talk to Heyes. He couldn't say anything to comfort his partner, who must be in real need of a kind word. What was going to happen to Heyes . . . and the Kid? "Cat," said Thaddeus, helplessly, "I don't what to do! What do I do?"

"You'll do what makes sense to you, and that'll be fine," said Cat. She put a hand on her new friend's shoulder and stood there for a while comforting him. When Thaddeus had settled some, she went to fix some broth and tea. She gave Jones a cup of hot tea for himself and, and when he had sipped on it a while and settled down, she gave him another hot cup to take to his partner.

Curry steeled himself for the emotional blow of seeing Heyes the way he was now. He took the cup of tea into the room where Heyes lay. He leaned weakly against a stack of pillows. Heyes' brown eyes were very wide and he started and gasped when the Kid came in, but he stayed calm. Heyes recognized Curry - there was no doubt of it. Their eyes met and Kid saw his partner's fear and pain all too clearly. The Kid looked at him and wanted more than anything to say something that would help, but he knew that he couldn't. He just tried to put all his sympathy and support into his eyes. Heyes dropped his gaze and avoided the Kid's eyes for a while, embarrassed by his disability, and by his previous panic. But in a few minutes he looked up at Curry again, his eyes filled with anxiety. The Kid fought against talking to Heyes – it was almost impossible for him to keep silent when Heyes needed his response so desperately. The Kid put the tea down for a moment and put his arm around his partner's shoulders, a lot like Cat had just done for him. Heyes didn't pull away this time. He put his hand over the Kid's for a moment, then took it away in confusion. This wasn't how men were supposed to act together, but then men were supposed to be able to talk and to understand.

The Kid handed Heyes the cup of hot tea and the man took it gratefully, finding comfort in this modest action that he could do just like he could before. He glanced up at the Kid and bit in his lip in frustration. He had always been polite and it went hard not to be able even to say thank you. He put his thanks into his gaze. Then the stricken Heyes looked down and concentrated on holding his tea and drinking it, covering his confusion.

The Kid watched Heyes closely as he drank his tea and took a little soup that Cat Christy brought in. When that was done, Curry brought his partner a shot glass of whiskey, which Heyes gulped down gratefully. Soon the anxious brown eyes drifted closed. The Kid stood for a long time, looking at his sleeping partner and wondering about what to do next. Then he turned out the lamp and walked back into the kitchen. Cat reached out to Thaddeus and before they knew it they were in each other's arms and in tears, each for his or her own loss and the echoing hurt of the other's loss. Cat tried to pull away, saying, "I need to go look after him. This is wrong."

"No," said Thaddeus. "It's right." Cat must have agreed, because she came back into his arms and stayed there.


	3. Chapter 3

Cat heard her patient moving restlessly in the night. She got up and Thaddeus helped her with Joshua. It wasn't hard to guess what he needed after tea and soup and whiskey. Heyes, his eyes dark blanks in the lamplight, tamely let the Kid help him.

That night the wind began to blow and snow began to fall. The hotel building shook in the grips of a western blizzard. By morning Christy's was so deep in snow that there was no hope of either customers or employees who didn't live there showing up. By the time the snow stopped the following day, four feet of solid white, with deeper drifts on the east side, had isolated Christy's. It make plenty of work for the Kid. He dug over to the stable to make sure the horses were OK. And he dug out to the street in case anyone needed to come in for shelter. But the blizzard brought the Kid some peace of mind. No posse was going to be chasing anyone in the Flatiron Mountains in that weather. It would be days before anything moved for many miles around and even then all tracks would be covered. They might even be safe until spring. Or then again, they might not. The posse could be trapped in town rather than outside it.

While the blizzard continued, the Kid he took breakfast up to the late waking Heyes. He showed his partner where things were in the room and mimed to him that he had been shot in the head. He showed his partner the deep and rapidly accumulating snow outside that gave them some measure of security. Heyes watched out of tired, bleary eyes. He seemed to understand, although he didn't reply in any way. He didn't even nod or shake his head; he just looked back. The Kid slipped once and said "Heyes . . ." In answer his partner drew back as if he had been struck. It was agony to see how badly hearing even his own name bothered him. But in silence, they were able to communicate. Curry was not surprised that he and Heyes could share ideas without words – they had done it many times as children, as outlaws, and as men on the run in hopes of amnesty. But the dull, shamed look in Heyes' eyes hurt Curry more than any wound. He hadn't done anything to be ashamed of, but it seems to be human nature to be embarrassed when we need help with everyday things we can usually do on our own.

The doctor was able to connect his own cleared path to the one the Kid had dug from the street to Christy's place. So the doctor was able to look in on his patient late in the afternoon after the storm ended. He was satisfied that Mr. Smith was healing well in body if not in mind. They kept the wounded man still and quiet. He put up no fight about that, which worried his partner. More than anything, Curry wanted to tell Heyes not to give up, that he would get better. The Kid had never seen Heyes give up, but now he seemed to be on the verge of it. He just lay in bed with his eyes closed or dull and distant. He hardly moved and never smiled.

The next day, with the doc's permission, Joshua was able to move cautiously to an easy chair for a little while. He walked slowly and clumsily, leaning on Thaddeus and Cat. The following day they helped him to get dressed. They moved Heyes to the Kid's upstairs room. Heyes needed lots of help from Thaddeus and Cat on the stairs. It was better for the patient to be away from the constant activity of the business end of the hotel and saloon as the town dug out of the blizzard and people began to turn up again. Heyes remained silent and unable to endure hearing anyone talk. When the Kid slipped and said even a single word to his partner the wounded man's anguished confusion was all too plain.

Peggy, the dark little dancehall girl who had helped care for Joshua when he first arrived, was a quiet soul herself. She took a special interest in their patient. Peggy was glad to bring him food and drink and help him in any way she could. She understood that she couldn't talk to the dark, silent man. She found other ways to reach Joshua. When Curry came into the upstairs room the second night that his partner was there with him, he wasn't surprised to find Joshua and Peggy gently kissing. The Kid smiled and withdrew quietly. He waited until he heard Peggy leave before he went back to the room. Heyes wasn't well enough to do much with a woman, but a little cuddling sure couldn't hurt him.

Curry was glad to know that something gave Heyes pleasure. The rest of his time was awful as the days went by. Heyes grew bored and restless, moaning in pain and frustration. When the doctor had tested to see if his patient could read the local paper, Joshua had just turned sadly away and handed the paper back. Offered a pencil and paper, he had seemed unsure what these things would even be used for.

When Curry woke up that first morning that Heyes was back in the bed next to his, it was kind of a relief to have his partner back with him as they had been in so many hotel rooms in so many little western towns. There was Heyes, in his scruffy long underwear, stretching and yawning just as the Kid had seen him on so many mornings. But when Curry said "good-morning" the way he had so many times, the awful look in his partner's eyes stopped him. Things weren't remotely the way they always had been before. The Kid had never spent any time with anyone who couldn't talk, or understand speech before. He had to think about every smallest bit of routine or anything that needed to be communicated, so he could get it across to Heyes without words. He found himself miming things, like bringing breakfast up the steps to Heyes that first morning, when his partner looked at him looking hungry and not sure what to do about it. It eventually occurred to Curry that he had actually known people before who couldn't talk or understand – but only babies. They could at least cry when they wanted something. Heyes didn't even have that outlet. He looked like he wanted to cry sometimes. He just sat with his head in his hands, embarrassed and frustrated.

Too weak to do much physically, unable to talk or understand, read or write, Heyes found nothing to do with the hours of his days. He couldn't even play cards or gossip to pass the time. He just lay in bed staring at the ceiling or he sat staring fixedly out the window at the snowy street. Something was going on in his partner's mind in those silent hours, Curry felt sure, but he had no clue what it was. Heyes was always thinking. Long rides had often hatched complex plans, in the past. Now, what could he be thinking of? Maybe Heyes was looking for the sheriff's office. It was in sight, but Curry guessed that Heyes didn't know it because there were no bars in the front windows and Heyes couldn't read the sign. It was terrible to see Heyes unable to read – it was something that had always given him such pleasure. Reading had always helped the curious outlaw in his eternal quest to learn. Now he was locked in his own mind as thoroughly as he was locked in the snow-bound Colorado town.

At night Curry heard Heyes tossing and turning and sometimes crying out in his sleep. During most of the daytime hours Heyes stayed in his hotel room or in the back room where he could be near Cat and the Kid without seeing any customers. It tortured Heyes to hear any speech at all, so he avoided any company other than the Kid and Cat and Peggy. He was reluctant to meet any stranger who would soon realize that he couldn't talk or even understand what was said to him. Without the comfort and connection of speech, Heyes became more despondent by the day. He knew all too well that he was nothing but a burden and a worry, and if the law or bounty hunters showed up, he would even be a danger to his partner. One morning the Kid found Heyes in their room stretched out on his bed, face down, crying hard. Curry crept away hoping that his partner would never know the Kid had seen him in such a shameful state, but Heyes looked up in time to see the man as close to him as a brother. The open agony in Heyes' tear-streaked face shook the Kid so badly that he ran down to the bar and poured himself a whiskey at 9:00 in the morning. It didn't help.

Cat tried to make friends with Joshua as best she could, with her sad smile and gentle touch. She learned all she could about him from his partner, trying to figure out what she could do to help. Thaddeus, of course, had to be very careful what he said about his partner and himself, even to Cat.

One afternoon when the town had dug out from the blizzard, Cat left the hotel while she went on some errand down the street. When she came back she had a new purchase to show to Thaddeus. He smiled dubiously and said, "I don't know. . ." But Cat knew what she was doing. She had had an idea of what might help to relieve Joshua's isolation and boredom. She found her silent patient in the back room petting the hotel's one-eared calico mouser.

Cat handed Joshua a battered dark wood parlor guitar she had seen in the window of a pawn shop. Thaddeus stood behind Cat and saw interest stir in his partner's eyes for the first time since he had been shot. Joshua gave Cat a look of thanks and touched her hand. He tuned up the guitar thoughtfully and then slowly picked out some chords. It had been a long time since he had played. When Heyes and the Kid had gone straight they had left Heyes' old guitar behind at Devil's Hole. It had been over a year since he had played at the Jordan family's place in Colorado where they had hidden out from yet another posse, and once he had borrowed a guitar from a girl they met in Mexico. Heyes slowly got back into practice on the instrument. Cat and Thaddeus left him to it.

As the blizzard passed and a few customers returned to Christy's place, Curry played poker and black jack with the local miners and townsfolk. He hoped to win some money to help with Heyes' medical and hotel bills. They must be mounting up, although the doctor and Cat hadn't mentioned it yet.

Curry could sometimes hear Heyes playing the guitar uncertainly in the back room. Gradually his skills were improving. One day Heyes played with the door open as if he wanted people to hear him finally making a coherent sound. Eventually, even Ted the irascible piano player stopped to listen. The Kid caught his breath. He knew the song that Heyes was playing - it was one he had heard Heyes' mother play when they were small, whenever there was real trouble at the farm. Heyes had played the same song on his guitar at Devil's Hole, right near the end when things were so bad, just before they had gone straight. The Kid guessed that people all over the country played that song for trouble. As Heyes played it through for a second time the girls and gamblers in the saloon looked up and one by one they started to sing, their soft voices standing in for that of the man who might never have a voice again.

The Kid joined in hoarsely:

". . . though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say, hard times come again no more.

Tis' the song, the sigh of the weary, hard times, hard times, come again no more.

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door, oh hard times, come again no more."


	4. Chapter 4

Late one morning in the room upstairs, Heyes found himself alone and restless. He heard the activity of the hotel downstairs and wondered if he could help, or at least have some company. He didn't know their names, or his own, but he wanted to be with people. Maybe he could cuddle that nice dark-haired girl? Leaning on the bed stead and the dresser to steady himself, Heyes made his way to the door of his and the Kid's room and looked out. He didn't see any customers, so he started for the stairs. Then he heard a rustle of stiff fabric behind him and the high, dignified voice of an elderly woman who had just emerged from one of the rooms. Heyes turned toward her. The polite man that he was, he couldn't ignore her even if he couldn't understand her or say anything to her. As he turned around, the lady screamed and stared at him. Heyes' stood in shock – what had frightened her? He was a reasonably nice looking guy, he had always thought. Everything was so strange since he had been here – had he somehow become frightening looking?

Cat was up the stairs in a moment, taking control of the situation, while Heyes took shelter in his room, his heart racing. The old lady still sounded hysterical, her voice running on and on as she walked away with Cat. Heyes couldn't understand her and cringed in pained confusion as the old lady said to Cat, "You know I didn't want to stop at this place, but when the snow was so deep and our stage broke down, we had to, and all these rough men and those floosies. I'm sorry, but I didn't trust anyone here – except you, of course, my dear. Then I saw that nice young man – he looked so nice – what happened to that nice young man?" Cat eventually got her away where her voice wouldn't bother Joshua.

Heyes looked at himself in the mirror. He had taken off his bandage earlier to comb his hair and had forgotten to put it back on. When he couldn't even think in words, it was hard to remember things. The wound did look pretty awful. It was still red and a little swollen, though much less than it had been. The bruising was mostly gone, but the ugly dark stitches were still there contrasting with his very pale skin where it had been shaded by his hair and his hat. With the hair around the left side of his head cut all short and ragged and that nasty wound, he guessed he had given the proper old lady a turn. He looked into the reflection of his own dark eyes. They looked a bit weird even to him – dull and blank as if there was something in his head that wasn't working right. That was true enough. Was he going crazy? He had been wondering that a lot lately, even though he didn't know the words for it. Heyes sat on the bed with his arms folded and faced the wall, head down.

When, nearly an hour later, the Kid came back from fetching a load of groceries with the wagon, he found his partner still sitting there, aching with misery. Cat had told Thaddeus about the screaming lady. God, how Curry wished he could say something that would comfort Heyes and tell him that he was going to be alright – even if he wasn't sure that it was true. But anything the Kid said would upset his partner. He put a hand on his Heyes' shoulder. What on earth were they going to do? Finally, the Kid got up and went down stairs. He motioned that Heyes could follow him, to come down where there was company, but his partner was still just staring into space, not seeing anything.

Later, the Kid found Heyes walking out the back door of the hotel into the snowy, freezing alley without a coat. His eyes were so blank that it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or trying to do. The Kid finally, wordlessly, convinced his partner to come back inside. When Heyes had settled down and Cat was there to watch him, the Kid put on his coat and went down the street to talk to Dr. Grauer in his office.

"Doc," asked Thaddeus, "Isn't there anything we can do? It's getting to where we have to watch him every minute. We don't know what he's going to do next. I found him in the kitchen yesterday, looking for God knows what. I can't hide all the dangerous things in a working kitchen. And I can't lock him away in his room." (The Kid couldn't tell the doctor, of course, that Heyes could get out of any locked room within minutes. Even if he had forgotten how to talk, the Kid doubted that Heyes would have forgotten how to pick locks. He certainly still carried his collection of homemade pick locks.)

The doctor didn't seem surprised to hear about the troubles Jones was having with his friend Smith. Doc Grauer said that he had communicated with a few doctors who had dealt with patients like Heyes, unable to speak after suffering strokes or bad head wounds. What Mr. Smith was going through seemed pretty typical of someone who had lost the power of speech. The doctor said, "I haven't heard anything about a cure or even any treatment. I'm still asking around. There are rumors that there might be someone who knows something more about this, but I haven't found the man yet. There is one thing that I have heard about and that you need to think about, if he gets worse."

"Worse?" asked the Kid, frightened at the thought.

"Not being able to talk or understand is real hard on a man. You can see that." The doctor heaved a deep sigh. "If he gets worse, if you have a hard time dealing with him . . . you might have to think about committing him."

"About what?!" The Kid was badly shaken. "Committing him to what?"

"To a mental institution. An insane asylum. They are getting better these days, although I admit there's a long way to go." The doctor knew that what he was saying was the very last thing that Jones wanted to hear.

"He just can't talk. He's not crazy!" Thaddeus was appalled.

"You sure about that?" The doctor was deadly serious. "You just said you never know what he'll do next. I'm not saying you have to do anything right now. But you need to know that the longer he stays this way, the worse he may get. That is what a lot of people with aphasia – what he has – the inability to speak - that's what happens to many of them. If a man can't live in society and can't care for himself, and you can't trust him not to hurt himself, what else are you going to do?"

The Kid felt more and more desperate after that terrible conversation. He wasn't sure what he was going to do to support himself and to look after his injured partner. Thank goodness Cat wasn't pressing Thaddeus to pay her anything. In fact, the Kid had started doing some work for Cat Christy. Thaddeus kept an eye on the saloon, as he and Heyes had done at a saloon in Wickenburg almost two years before. He made sure there was no trouble and that everything ran smoothly. There were moments when it was undeniably helpful for Cat to have a man with a fast gun hand around the place, and Thaddeus wasn't too proud to deal cards or to help wash dishes and clear tables.

Curry was more worried by the hour. The next day, Heyes started to wander away again until Peggy stopped him. She ran to tell Mr. Jones. The Kid couldn't commit Heyes! He wouldn't! It was much too much like the prison sentence they had been running away from for years. But what else could he do, in the end?

The Kid was starting to get as restless as Heyes was. He worried what they would do if they were caught by the law here, and what they would do when it was time to move on. Time to move on had always come wherever they had been since they went straight. It would be days before Heyes could possibly be strong enough to ride - if he could be trusted with a horse. Thaddeus asked the doctor again if his telegrams had found any help for Mr. Smith, but there was still no useful news.

Thaddeus talked to Cat about what the doctor had said. "I can't do that to him, Cat! I can't! We're like brothers. He's looked after me since I was a baby! We've always, well almost always, been close. But we're asking so much of you and all your people. Can we keep him here, at least for a while longer?"

"Of course, Thaddeus! We'll deal with whatever we have to. We won't do what the doctor says." Cat was as appalled as Thaddeus had been at the idea of committing Joshua.

"But if he does get worse?" Thaddeus wasn't going to hide his head from that threat.

"We'll face that when it happens, if it happens" said Cat.


	5. Chapter 5

One morning soon after Louisville had dug out of the blizzard, a group of three surly, skinny saddle bums came to the bar at Christy's place. The three, a scrawny dirty blonde, a pimply teen-ager, and a tall grey-haired man, were all dirty and thirsty for liquor. But the men had little cash. When they tried to improve their situation by playing some poker with the locals, they did not fare well. Desperation does not help any man's poker game.

The trio of saddle bums got into a fierce argument with a trio of local miners. The Kid was about to throw the strangers out when Sheriff Wilde happened in. The Kid slunk into the back room to avoid the man in the badge, but kept his ears pricked for trouble. Sure enough, another loud argument was not long in coming. "Damn you, you're dealing from the bottom of the deck," the grey-haired stranger yelled. "I'm dealing straight and you know it!" a local miner known as Buster answered. Yells came from the other two strangers. The sound of a struggle was obvious – punches being thrown and maybe some chairs as well. The Kid peered through the door into the front room in time to see the sheriff stand up and call for order. He pulled his six-gun before the grey-haired saddle bum could even touch his gun, but behind the sheriff the blonde stranger was sneaking up with an axe, ready to strike. The sheriff didn't have a chance unless someone else helped.

The Kid was the one to do it. With his usual lightning draw he was able to nick the blonde in the shoulder before he could strike the sheriff. The grey-eyed sheriff turned and looked the Kid full in the face for a long moment. The Kid was positive now that the sheriff recognized him. The man in the badge gave the Kid a silent salute and turned to deal with the drunk and disorderly saddle bums he had to take care of, including one who needed a doctor. Not a word was said between Wilde and the Kid.

The Kid kept his bag packed and prowled the back rooms of Christy's place waiting for the sheriff to come back for him. But a day passed and then another. The sheriff checked in at the bar as usual to make sure that everything was peaceful, but he never confronted the Kid or Heyes. "Now what?" wondered the Kid. But there was no one he could talk to about it. Cat didn't know who her new lover was and Heyes couldn't bear to hear any talk at all. The Kid was stuck and he felt all alone.


	6. Chapter 6

The next day, the Kid was helping his partner, who still got dizzy when he leaned over, to pull on his boots. Curry, as he sometimes did, accidently let a few words slip out. "Heyes, damn it, hold still!" Heyes' head went up suddenly, but he didn't cringe. Instead he turned to look at Curry keenly, his eyes narrowing in concentration.

Curry looked back at Heyes and asked slowly, in a low voice, "Heyes, did you understand what I said?" Heyes studied his partner and licked his lips nervously. He seemed to want terribly to say something. Curry asked again, very slowly, "Heyes, do you understand me? Do you know your name?" He nodded as if to urge his partner to do the same. Heyes hadn't nodded or shaken his head since the shooting. It was as if in his mind these gestures were the same as the words yes and no, to which his wounded mind gave him no access. But now, copying Curry, he nodded slowly and uncertainly. "You do? You know your name, Heyes, you understand?" The Kid fought to keep the excitement out of his voice and to speak very slowly and plainly. Heyes nodded again, with more certainty. "But you still can't say anything, can you?" Curry shook his own head to cue his partner, who tentatively shook his head. "But you can understand me! That's wonderful! You're getting better!" Heyes looked up at the Kid with what might have been hope, but then he looked at the floor in embarrassment. He was a proud man and being able to understand some just made his own inability to speak all the clearer to him.

To Curry it was a tremendous relief to be able to talk to Heyes, even if his partner couldn't answer. Now that he could understand spoken words, Heyes was more rational and less likely to do strange things. There was a slight stirring of life behind his eyes sometimes, although they were still terribly dull in comparison with the lively look that Curry had been used to seeing in his partner's features. The Kid explained to Heyes exactly what had happened to him and where he was. He had to speak slowly and use simple words and lots of repetition and gestures, or Heyes would look confused. He would reach up with one hand to stop his partner and get him to repeat what he had said. It was easy to go past what Heyes could understand as he slowly fought back to understanding speech.

Curry was explained how many days they had been at Christy's place. He stumbled a bit over figuring up the number. Heyes held up all ten fingers and looked at Curry questioningly. Curry said "Yeah, Heyes, ten days ago. You been here ten days – three days out cold, two more days down stairs during that blizzard, and five days up here, counting today." Heyes held up three fingers on his right hand and then the other two fingers, and then all five fingers on the left hand. He seemed to find some satisfaction in being able to do a little calculation. Heyes had always loved math and had used it all the time when he had headed the Devil's Hole gang. Three plus two plus five wasn't much compared to the complex figuring Heyes had done before, when he was figuring up the time tables and logistics for plans, but it was something.

Curry went to get Doc Grauer, who was delighted to find that Mr. Smith was improving. The hard question he had brought up before didn't seem so pressing. Heyes didn't try to leave the hotel in the cold again. The doctor could talk with his patient now and get nods and head shakes in answer to simple questions if he asked slowly. The Doc asked if Mr. Smith was still in pain. He nodded, but held up his hand with the thumb and finger close together to indicate that it didn't hurt too much. The doctor noticed that the bruise was rapidly disappearing from the wounded man's face and he thought that Mr. Smith's brain must be healing the same way. Maybe he would heal up and be talking soon. The Doc thought to check again to see if Mr. Smith could read – he showed him the latest issue of the town paper. Heyes just looked frustrated and shook his head. He handed the paper back to the doctor, all too calmly. Doc sighed and said "Not yet. But maybe soon, Mr. Smith. Maybe soon."


	7. Chapter 7

The next day Heyes seemed to understand more and not to get confused so easily. He ate breakfast with Curry and Cat. Judging from his attentive listening and the way his eyes followed the speakers, he seemed able to follow their talk about routine matters like stocking the bar. He particularly paid attention to anything with numbers involved, like how many cases of whiskey ordered, or how many decks of cards, or how much money the place brought in.

Heyes saw Sheriff Wilde in the saloon that afternoon and the Kid was there to see his partner turn pale and look at the tall law man with dread in his eyes. Had the sheriff noticed Heyes when the door to the back room had opened for a few moments? The two partners exchanged an uncertain glance. But now Heyes paced their room all the more, open fear added to his restlessness and frustration. The Kid hoped that the sheriff posed no danger after he had saved the man with the badge from an axe blow, but he could not be sure. He didn't dare to approach the sheriff himself to ask.

When Cat and Thaddeus were alone in the hotel office, she looked him hard in the eye and asked a series of questions that she knew were closely related, "Thaddeus, why didn't you even talk to Sheriff Wilde after that fight? Who shot Joshua? Why'd they shoot him – and why didn't you go see the sheriff about it?" There was a long, painful silence. The Kid wouldn't meet his lover's eyes.

Jones's voice was low and strained, "Cat, I can't tell you that. I would if I could, but I just can't. You've got to trust me a little bit longer."

"Smith and Jones. I should of known. Guess I did know. You're wanted, aren't you? Those aren't real names." Cat didn't need to put any question into the phrase – the answer was clear. The Kid sighed and nodded. "Come on, honey, you know I wouldn't turn in you and Joshua, or whatever his name really is, for a couple hundred bucks. You mean an awful lot more to me than that." She took Thaddeus' hand and he kissed her gently.

Cat went on, with the Kid's arms around her,"But I've got to look after my people – the girls, the guys, the customers. I've got to know if some posse's gonna show up here looking for you, ready to shoot" Cat's voice stayed low and steady, but her deep blue eyes were troubled.

The Kid wondered how much he could tell her. He began, "We've gone straight – you know that. But yeah, it's possible. A posse shot Joshua – they were just chasing us for the money. We didn't do anything – anything new. The posse could show up. I don't think they will, after all this time, and all that snow, but they could," The Kid admitted. "But you know I can take care of it. You've seen me draw. I wouldn't put you in danger, not for anything." Curry held his breath. Was everything going to fall apart right now?

"Yeah, I've seen you draw. You're good. Too good. It's isn't just a couple hundred on your heads, isn't it?" Cat looked hard into the Kid's blue eyes, to read the answers there. "It's more than that - or you'd trust me. You know I stay up on the wanted posters. I've got to keep my place safe. I can look you two up real easy."

"But you won't, will you?" pleaded the Kid. "I can't stop you. But please, just don't ask. Not yet. When Joshua can ride steady and we can leave, we will. It won't be long now. We'll just vanish and we won't be back. But don't be trying names on us. I don't want to have to lie. Not to you."

Cat's eyes teared up. She reached for the Kid's hand. "No! Don't vanish! I've lost too many people! Like Pa – and Ma before that! And my kid brother . . . and . . . and . . . OK, I won't ask. I'll just trust you. Long as I can." The two blue-eyed worried people held each other close and tried to kiss their fears away.


	8. Chapter 8

Heyes was very shy since being shot, but Cat got him started helping a bit around the place, drying dishes and polishing silverware. He quickly got tired and had to sit down, but it was better to do something than nothing. One at a time Heyes met the hotel employees, Joe and Ted and the girls. He looked them in the eyes and nodded, but of course couldn't do more than that. The hotel and saloon folks were kind to Heyes and smiled at him, trying to make him feel welcome even if he was a strange, silent man. He would play his guitar for them and listen to them talk, but he couldn't smile. It wasn't in him. Not yet.

The various men who came in to play checkers and poker gradually got used to seeing the silent Mr. Smith around, with the bandage on his head. One day the bar tender offered Joshua a hard-boiled egg, but he wouldn't take it. He turned away, unable to explain the memory that made the offer painful. Nobody resented Joshua for things like that. They didn't understand him exactly, but they felt for him.

One day, when Joshua and Thaddeus were both in the back room sorting out decks of cards and piles of chips for the gaming that would go on later, Cat padded through the door silently and put her finger to her lips. She looked warningly at them and pointed out to the front room, where the boys could hear the bartender talking loudly to someone saying, "No, we ain't had no such two men show up here. You seen a dark-haired man in a black hat and curly dark blonde in a brown hat, Ted?" No one there had seen Joshua in his black hat, but the identity of the two men had to be obvious to anyone who worked at or frequented Christy's Place. The boys looked out the back door and could saw someone moving stealthily in the alley behind the hotel. So there was no escape that way. The Kid's mouth flew open and he looked at Heyes in desperation.

Cat gestured for Thaddeus and Joshua to follow her. She led them through the kitchen door and reached inside a tall cabinet to move a couple of hinged pieces of wood. Then the whole cabinet swung aside. Behind it was a hidden spot where there was just space for the two men to hide in a crouch, pressed closely against one another. They guessed it might have been made for hiding bootleg liquor or hiding from Indians years before. The secret door was old and long disused. The hidden door creaked so loudly as Cat closed it that that they were afraid the men searching for them would hear it from two rooms away. The Kid and Heyes stood squashed together and bent over awkwardly in terrified silence, trying to hear what was going on. The employees and regular customers hadn't seen much of Joshua yet, but they had seen him and knew that he and Thaddeus were partners. If anyone, a single dance hall girl, a single customer, anyone at all, didn't keep up the pretense that the bar tender and piano player had started, it would be all over. Jail for the rest of their lives - at the very least. Maybe a shoot-out? And the people who had lied for them would be in deep trouble. That sure included Cat. Two hearts pounded, close enough for each to feel the other's. There was nothing they could do but wait and hope. They hoped that they hadn't accidentally irritated anyone, and that no one was enough in need of money, for them to decide that they would turn the boys in.

As they listened, it was hard to tell what was going on. Just a parade of voices, woman after woman and man after man. They must all being saying no, they didn't care what the guy down the street had said, they knew no such men. Because there was no commotion, no sudden opening of the hidden space behind the cabinet. Bruce, the skinny newly hired teen-ager who washed glasses, hardly knew the two men and sure could use the reward money. He answered in such a loud, nervous voice that the two hiding men were afraid that he would give them away willingly or no. But he denied ever having seen such men. Somebody was mistaken. The searching men – the boys recognized their voices as men from the posse that had shot Heyes – came back to the back room and the kitchen. They hunted everywhere, opening cabinet doors, looking behind every flower bag, keg, and broom. But they never mentioned the names of the men they were hunting, or the amount of the reward. They didn't want to share that money with anyone, that was for sure. Then they were opening the door of the very cabinet in front of Heyes and Curry! It creaked and they braced themselves in absolute stillness and silence, not daring to breath, and praying that the catch that opened to the space where they hid would not open by accident, and that the men would not see the catches that opened the place behind the cabinet. . . It seemed like forever. The cabinet closed. The hostile voices faded. Minutes passed. Sweat dripped in the hidey hole.

After what seemed a long time, the door to the hidey hole opened and Cat led out the stiff, bent over men. Joshua stumbled and Cat had to keep him from falling. She helped him into a chair. He looked his thanks at Cat and hung his head. He knew that if it weren't for his wound, the Kid could have ridden away long ago without putting anyone in such danger, or offering such temptation. Thaddeus told Cat, "You sure have loyal folks, Cat! Every one of them! Not that it surprises me, but it sure pays tribute to the way you treat people. Including us. We are deeply beholden to you. And to all your people."

Cat gave a crooked smile and said, "After all that, I sure am curious about you two. You keep your secret as long as you like. I don't care how much money it is. I'm not turnin' you boys in. 'Cept for one thing. You ever murder anybody?"

Joshua and Thaddeus exhaled as one. "No!" said Jones firmly. "Neither one of us ever murdered anyone - or asked anyone to murder anyone. . . I admit I've put some bullets into guys in posses on our tails. And I shot a man to death. But it wasn't murder! The sheriff stood right there and saw that guy call me out and refuse to let me leave town without drawing on him. He was damn fast. I had to kill him." Now it was Heyes' turn to sweat. He would never forgive himself for prodding Danny Bilson into gunning for the Kid. What if Danny had been the faster gun? It was Heyes who really felt that that blood was on his hands. That blood – and more from when he had led the Devil's Hole gang. It hadn't been murder, not by their hands, but it had been death. Hearing the Kid tell that story brought Heyes' guilt to the front of his mind, but it had been constantly in his thoughts all along after he had been shot. He couldn't escape the thought that his current troubles were a direct punishment for his dishonest past and the people who had suffered because of him – from dead gang members, to the people who had lost money in the gang's bank robberies, and most of all the Kid himself. And now Cat and her people could be added to the list of people Heyes saw as victims of his past dishonesty and greed. He had always tried to think of himself as a good guy, a nice person who had just been in a bad business, but that image made no sense to him now.

Now that Cat was asking the two hunted men about their dark pasts, they looked hard at each other. They could hardly keep their names a secret from Cat now. Heyes nodded at the Kid, who stopped for a minute to search his mind for all the reasons he shouldn't do this. Finally he nodded back. He said to Cat, "If you'll promise not to tell anyone, not anyone, until we give you permission, I think I can tell you our names. But you've got to promise! Your people held firm just now – but they didn't know how much money was on the line. If they knew, there would have to be one – at least one – who'd give way to an awful lot of temptation."

"Alright," Cat said evenly, "I promise. I'll keep it to myself. I've got an idea that I know. I do keep up on the wanted posters. But you tell me."

The Kid took a deep breath and came out with it, "I'm Kid Curry and this is Hannibal Heyes." She gasped at the famous names as her blue eyes looked in the blue eyes of the fastest gun in the West. But she wasn't really that shocked. She had been pretty sure that she had figured it out herself and she had been right.

"It was a good thing that no one in the saloon knew for sure who you were! With that amount of money at stake . . . Nice to meet you Mr. Curry, Mr. Heyes." She said in mock solemnity. "I thought it must be you – who else would be chased that hard and not have murdered anyone? Now we are in this together. What do you want me to call you?"

"I know you'll stick with Thaddeus and Joshua any time anybody else could hear," said the Kid. "But when it's safe you can call me Kid if you like. But - I really would rather you called me Jed – my real name is Jedediah. And my partner here prefers just plain Heyes."

"We've been straight about two years. There's a sheriff up in Porterville, Wyoming – Lom Trevors – who's trying to get the Governor of Wyoming to grant us an amnesty. But the governor's being real cagey. He's watching the political angles. He won't come out and give it to us. So we're still just as wanted as we ever were."

"How on earth do you guys get by with $20,000 on your heads?" Cat wanted to know.

"Well," said the Kid. "That's a lot of long stories. It ain't easy! We've had to leave behind a lot of good jobs and good people. Sometimes we've got close to starving – even with silver-tongued Heyes and his plans." Heyes winced visibly at that unfortunate phrase. The Kid felt awful – he had slipped and brutally reminded Heyes of how far short he now fell of his brilliant reputation. "Oh Christ, I'm sorry, Heyes!" Heyes shook his head and waved the Kid's apologies away with one hand, but the pained look in his eyes belied the casual gesture. The Kid went on, a bit shakily, "Sometimes we've got close to splitting up. But here we are. Still watching each other's backs." Cat leaned over and gave the Kid an encouraging kiss and called him "Jed" for the first time.

When the boys went out into the saloon again, everyone at Christy's was sneaking glimpses at the men the posse had been chasing. They wondered as much as Cat had who they really were. But they trusted Cat and no one asked any direct questions. Cat knew her people – they would go to her, not to the boys.

The Kid caught even Cat giving Heyes long looks that night at dinner. She felt for the silent Heyes even more than she had for Joshua. She now appreciate that he had gone from leading the most famous gang in the west to running from the law to being unable even to talk or look after himself. How he stayed sane, she didn't know. Maybe he didn't. Since he couldn't talk, it was hard to know.

It was a strange feeling for the Kid and Heyes to have someone who hadn't known them for long whom they actually trusted enough to know who they were. They knew that Cat wouldn't turn them in, but it was hard to trust anyone that much, anymore. They kept kind of looking over their shoulders a bit, sometimes physically as well as mentally.

And they were extra special sure to be very, very nice to the bar tender, the piano player, and the saloon girls. And Bruce!


	9. Chapter 9

The next day, Heyes was in the back room of the saloon, tired of playing guitar, unable to find the cat, and finding no small tasks to do. He looked over at the town paper on Cat's desk, hoping there might be a picture or anything interesting to look at. And he looked again, longer and he kept looking. He picked up the paper and went to find the Kid and Cat, who were talking together in the kitchen as they started to fix dinner. Heyes pointed at the paper and looked at it and ran his finger along the words. And he nodded at Kid and Cat, hoping they would understand that he could read! He still couldn't talk, but he could read. The Kid clapped his partner on the shoulder and Cat smiled broadly at him. This was a big improvement!

The Kid fetched Doc Grauer, who was cheered by the progress of his patient. He tested Joshua to make sure he really could read; he would say a word and Joshua would find it in the newspaper and point to it. Over and over he got it right – even with longer words like "habitual" or "deleterious" that the Doc hadn't been sure he would have known in the first place. He really could read! The doc went out to the poker tables and borrowed a deck of cards. Quickly he saw that Mr. Smith could identify numbers, too. He held up fingers to indicate the numbers, since he couldn't say them aloud. He took the cards and expertly shuffled them and dealt them out on Cat's desk with swift precision, sorting them into suits to show his friends that it wasn't only numbers he could identify. The Kid could see that Heyes enjoyed handling cards again.

The doc handed Joshua a pencil and opened to hotel's account book to a blank page so his patient could try to write. Mr. Smith took the pencil and wrote fluently for some time. But when the Doc looked at the sheet, there wasn't a word on it. What Joshua had written was a complex sequence of mathematical equations studded with fraction lines, parenthesis, and square root signs. The doc studied it in puzzlement. He had no idea what it meant or whether it meant anything other than nonsense. He handed the book back to Smith and asked him to sign his name. The wounded man took the pencil and held it over the page and breathed hard, concentrating like mad, but then he flung the pencil away in frustration. He couldn't do it. The thought process to write just wasn't there. The doctor picked up the pencil and handed it back to Joshua, asking him to write a word, any word, even just a single letter. Smith just stared at the sheet and shook his head. He could read, and numbers he could write, but words still eluded him for writing or speaking. When challenged, he couldn't say any numbers out loud, but he could hold up fingers for them. Soon he was so rapid at it, indicating one digit after the other from the equations he had written, that the doc could hardly follow him.

"How peculiar!"exclaimed Doc Grauer, "I guess words and numbers are in different places in your brain, Mr. Smith. And so are reading and talking. I've never seen the like! But if some parts are healing, maybe the rest will too, in time." Joshua looked at him like a starving man with a meal just out of reach. The doctor looked back at the equations he had written. Doc asked, "Mr. Jones, does Mr. Smith often write equations like this? Or is this new since he was shot?"

"Oh no, he's always done that. These are longer, but he's had more time to think about it, I guess. Maybe when he's just sitting there, staring into space, he's working problems. It wouldn't surprise me none. He loves math. He works problems for fun. He says . . . said, 'there's a formula for everything.'"

"How far did he get in school? This looks like advanced algebra. Did he go to college?" asked the doctor earnestly.

"College?" Thaddeus hooted derisively, "He didn't finish the 7th grade and I didn't get to 5th. We . . . well, we missed a lot of school, one way and another. But Joshua . . . he . . . he knew . . . a man who had been a teacher and gave him a book on math – algebra I think. Joshua about memorized that book, before he lost it in a river crossing."

While they were talking, Joshua was reading the paper hungrily. He went up to their room to read in privacy. It was irritating to hear people talk about him when he couldn't answer for himself. And to hear the Kid making fun of his little education was more than he could bear. It has always been a sore point for Heyes.

The Kid was relieved to see his partner getting better and able to do more. Curry didn't see how Heyes' reading was going to help them to make money or keep Heyes safe. But the Kid kept thinking about it after the doctor left. He looked at the account book Heyes had written his equations in. "Cat, do you need help with the books? I mean, I don't know how your math is – I'm not implying anything, but Heyes is really good at math. I mean really good at math. He kept books for a saloon before and he saved that lady who owned the place a lot of money. I don't mean to imply you have any trouble with the books, but it sure would make Heyes feel a lot better if he could do something useful. It's about driven him nuts to just be dependent on other folks. He's used to being in charge."

Cat thought for a minute. "Jed, I'd be delighted to have someone to help me keep books. I hate doing math! No one at the hotel is any better at it than I am. But there are words in that book, too, not just numbers. If I couldn't tell what words the numbers were about it wouldn't mean anything to me. If he can't write words, only numbers . . ."

The Kid went to find Heyes in their room. He showed the account book to Heyes and told him the problem about words. Heyes bit his lip and tried again to write words – and failed. He tried again and failed again. But he thought about it for a bit. Then he looked at the first page of the book and pointed at a phrase – poker chips – and underlined it and wrote the number 1 next to it and circled the number. Then he found the word "Cards" and underlined that and put the number 2 next to it and circled it. He went down the pages and gave a number to every word that recurred – all the standard expenses of the hotel and the names of the employees and the sources of income. Dates, of course, were easy to indicate using just numbers. Heyes had solved the problem of the missing variable – the thing he couldn't do - just like an algebra problem. Each category would have a number to indicate it and Cat would soon learn the system. The Kid wrote out the complete list in the back of the book in his rough hand writing in alphabetical order so Cat could consult it. Heyes wouldn't need to; he had the meanings of the numbers all memorized as soon as he wrote them down.

The Kid had just assumed that Heyes would come up with something, and implement it effortlessly. But Curry stopped for a moment and it struck him how much he had always casually counted in Heyes' brilliance – not just his memory, but his creative ideas. The Devil's Hole boys wouldn't have gotten far without Heyes. Other than the Kid's gun hand, and Heyes' many talents, there hadn't been any outstanding abilities in the bunch. In fact, some of the guys were a little slow – and therefore less likely to rebel against Heyes' strict rules and complex plans. They had always just done what Heyes told them to do. That had been enough to keep them successful, until Heyes and the Kid went straight. Then the gang had lapsed into obscurity.

With Cat's happy approval, Heyes immediately started on his new job. He sat in the back room, looking almost normal for the first time since he had arrived as he dipped a pen into ink and neatly filled in figures. Cat was glad to have a bookkeeper and was overjoyed to see Heyes happily occupied.

But doing the hotel books was a small job. By late the next afternoon Heyes had been through the whole account book and had it all straightened out and had started a new system of entries. He showed Cat what he had done and an instance or two of where she might save money, which pleased her. But Heyes was at loose ends again. He still couldn't utter a single syllable or write a single word. He wandered around the hotel, reading an old poetry anthology that Cat's late mother had owned. He was like a bird whose cage had been enlarged a bit, but not opened.


	10. Chapter 10

The next afternoon the Kid couldn't find Heyes in the hotel and his coat was missing. Curry was glad that his partner had finally found the confidence to go out by himself, but he worried what might happen. Minutes later the Kid heard a commotion on the street near Christy's Place. He heard the word "dummy" shouted in the creaking voice of an eccentric old miner Curry had seen around the bar. The Kid ran like he had never run in his life to go to his partner's aid. Who else could the "dummy" be?

Sure enough, the old miner was on the board walk shouting at Heyes, "Get out of the way, you dummy, I got gear to move! Got to get out while there's a thaw. You damn dummy, move!" The people on the street were gasping and shouting as the old man and Heyes faced each other. Both had their guns in their hands. Heyes' eyes were blazing with fury. He really did look dangerous and not quite sane. Considering Heyes' pride in his intelligence, it must be hurting him badly to be called "dummy" by anyone. Every time the old miner used the offensive slur, Heyes bristled and his eyes blazed more fiercely. He could reach his breaking point at any time. The old miner, with his mule tied in front of the hotel, yelled and stared at Heyes. A pile of gear was at the old man's feet. "Get that dummy out of here! He was in my way and now he's gonna shoot me! He's a mad man! Get this dummy put away or I'll call the sheriff to lock him up!" A book lay on the boardwalk in front of Heyes, who had obviously been walking along reading. He must have lost track of where he was for a moment and gotten in the old prospector's way. Heyes was still a bit absent-minded and now it could cost him his life, or at least his freedom.

The Kid grabbed his partner's gun hand with his left hand and drew his six-gun with record speed with his right. The Kid was as riled as he ever had been in his life. "Shut up, old man! If you call my partner that – that word one more time, I'll shoot you myself! And Joshua, put up that gun right now!" Heyes struggled to escape Curry's hold, but the Kid held firm. As weak as Heyes still was, even the Kid's left hand was more than a match for Heyes' right. The old miner gave way and holstered his own pistol. "Mr. Jones'" reputation with a gun had gotten around town quickly. The old miner loaded up his mule. He went off with it, muttering, but he didn't show any signs of calling the sheriff.

Curry pulled the gun out of his partner's hand. He hauled Heyes off the street into the saloon, put Heyes' six-gun in its holster and took Heyes' gun belt off him like a parent undressing a naughty two-year-old. Heyes stared at the Kid with fire in his eyes and looked like he was about to hit his partner. Kid took Heyes by the arm and said, "Joshua, don't let that old coot get under your skin. You know he don't mean nothin' about your brains – just your damn mouth!"

Heyes drew away from his partner, who still kept Heyes' gun belt out of his reach. Heyes looked at Curry with fury at his betrayal. Heyes stalked up the hotel stairs, fuming. The Kid and everyone in the saloon stared after Joshua as he went. Curry just let Heyes go. Anything he did now would only make things worse. Heyes' wounded pride would heal in time – hopefully without the interference of Sheriff Wilde.

Curry looked down at Heyes' gun belt in his hand. Where could he put it that his partner wouldn't find it? Not the hotel safe – that was for sure! The Kid told Cat what he was doing and hid the pistol in a high cupboard in the kitchen where he hoped Heyes would never look. And if he did, Heyes' hunting around for a box to stand on to reach the cabinet would get Cat's attention in time for her to stop him.

Heyes didn't leave his room all afternoon, as far as the Kid knew. But when Curry went to find his partner to call him to dinner, the room was empty. Curry ran down the stairs. He went to the office where the hotel safe was. As the Kid opened the door, Heyes got rapidly to his feet. He had obviously been working on the safe door. Curry sighed – loudly so Heyes could hear him and realize how stupid he looked. He did realize it and looked away from the Kid pointedly. Heyes tried to walk past the Kid as if he hadn't seen him. Curry caught Heyes by the arm and said in a low voice, "If you rob Cat you'll regret it! If you want money, come play poker with those guys out front. You could beat them with your eyes closed." The Kid knew it wasn't money that Heyes was after – it was his gun. Curry felt sick to think what Heyes might want it for. Not to shoot the old miner, that was for sure. Only rarely was Heyes a vindictive man.

Heyes glared furiously at the Kid. He would be delighted to play poker, but how could he? He pointed at his own useless mouth and shrugged elaborately in frustration. How could he play poker if he couldn't talk?

"Come on Heyes!" said the Kid, "You're getting better. You just gotta have patience. You figured out the account book in a hurry. You can do the same thing for poker. There ain't many things to say – just bet or stand pat or pass or fold and not much more'n that – the money in your hand will tell anyone what you want to bet. You can write any numbers you need. If you have any trouble, I'll bet I can translate for you. You know we don't need our mouths to talk."

Heyes looked at Curry thoughtfully for a long moment. Heyes was biting his lip and his brown eyes looked pre-occupied as he followed Curry to a back table where they ate dinner. The Kid could almost see the wheels turning in his partner's head. The Kid had seen that look many, many times before and he smiled to himself. His partner was planning something. Now that was more like the Heyes the Kid knew! After dinner Heyes brought out a deck of cards and showed Curry the signs he had come up with, to make sure they were clear to him. Then he was ready to hit the tables.

Sure enough, when they got to the main poker table, the men readily made room for the new player and greeted him warmly. Heyes sat down with the men who had seen him so many times without ever hearing his voice. He looked as cool as if he had played with them a thousand times. Curry said, "You all know my partner, Joshua Smith. He's well enough to try a little poker, if you don't mind a silent partner." There was a little chuckle at Thaddeus's weak pun.

Heyes found it good to sit down at a poker table again, where he was sure he knew his business. While these men were thinking he was a 'dummy' he could fleece them, although Curry hoped Heyes would go slowly. In the mere two and half weeks the Kid had been in town, these men had become his friends. They had supported him even when they knew he was using an alias. While they ate, the Kid had reminded his partner that Heyes had time to get money out of them a little without taking them too badly. And without their noticing how easily he did it. And he surely did it easily. Curry could practically see his partner counting cards and figuring and refiguring odds in his head, as he always did. Heyes always had a better idea of where all the cards were and what the odds for any hand were than anyone else at the table. And he didn't neglect the characters involved. It was a bit unnerving for the local men to see the keen gaze of the silent man as he glanced up to study their faces for the most subtle signs of their intensions.

The following day a new man who had come on the train was staying at Christy's place. He joined in Heyes' and the Kid's poker game, where his fresh supply of cash was welcome. The new player, apparently pretty well financed, was a neatly bearded, well-dressed, middle-aged man named Leutze. He said that he was headed for New York, but he seemed in no hurry to get there. Leutze played poker into the small hours, chatting affably with the local men.

But as he played, Leutze couldn't hide that he was watching Heyes, fascinated by the mute man. The Kid supposed it was kind of an unusual sight. Heyes' signs for stand pat (a pat on the table), pass (a sideways gesture) and so on were so clear and so swift that the men at the table quickly forgot that he didn't actually say a word aloud. Tonight Heyes was getting a little carried away, winning too much, it seemed to the Kid, with the stranger as a ready mark. Curry was worried by how closely Leutze studied Heyes with a strangely knowing look and a slight smile. And Leutze didn't exactly ignore Curry, who communicated so well with Heyes, silently.


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning Curry had a quiet talk with, or at least to, Heyes about Leutze. Could he be a bounty hunter? Heyes nodded his agreement that Leutze might well be, although he would have been the best-dressed and best educated bounty hunter they had ever run across. It didn't take much for Heyes and the Kid to come up with and coordinate a little plan. With a few gestures from Heyes and words from the Kid it was all in place.

The next morning as Heyes went out the front door of the saloon and toward the livery stable, Dr. Leutze was following him at no very great distance. Heyes took Clay out and walked him to the blacksmith's shop. The former outlaw stood and watched his horse be shod, communicating with the blacksmith with swift but clear gestures that anyone could understand. He easily made it clear than Clay had been slightly striking a front heel with a hind hoof when he was going flat out. This was a fault easily corrected by the right shoeing. Heyes really was clever at talking with his hands and there was Leutze just across the street, watching. As Heyes dropped off Clay at the stable and walked out a side door and down an ally, there was Leutze again. And there was Curry behind him with a stern voice and his gun drawn. Heyes stared hotly at the Easterner, looking as dangerous as his partner, even without a gun tied down on his hip.

The Kid said, "Hands up, Leutze. Hold it right there. Now why are you following Mr. Smith around like a hound after a coon?" Leutze looked surprised and he reached for the front pocket of his coat. "Hold it, Leutze!" said Curry, and the easterner, innocent but not stupid, obeyed. Heyes reached into the pocket and found in it a silver case filled with business cards. They read "Dr. Samuel Leutze, specialist in Aphasia." and gave his address at a clinic in New York and a list of schools and degrees and awards.

Curry's mouth dropped opened. He knew that word now, even if Heyes didn't yet. Dr. Grauer had finally found what he had been sending messages about! Heyes' eyes were fixed avidly on the doctor, who explained, "I'm a specialist, gentlemen, in aphasia. It's the thing that is plaguing the silent Mr. Smith – the inability to speak. Dr. Grauer has been putting out communications looking for a specialist, and that's what I am. I'm the leading one on the continent, so it's a good thing I happened to be coming back from San Francisco right now and could change my route to come through Louisville. I apologize for staring, Mr. Smith, but I wanted to see how you behaved. I've never seen anyone who has adapted as quickly and well as you have. I can't believe you've been without speech for only weeks – you do as well as men who have been without speech for years. It's amazing that you could do this all on your own, without anyone to teach you. " Heyes was gazing intently at Dr. Leutze with a hungry light in his eyes and his lips a little parted. The one man who might be able to help him was standing in front of him!

Curry exclaimed, "Oh my God – can you cure him?"

"I don't know," said Dr. Leutze, frankly. "Some people can recover completely, some partially, and some not at all. So I won't promise anything except to try, Mr. Smith, if you will let me." He directed his remarks at Heyes, rather than routing around him as so many people did, now. Heyes reached eagerly for the doctor's hand.

Curry interrupted the exchange. "We don't have a lot of money, Doctor," he said, slowly, "except what my partner won from you last night!"

The doctor answered rapidly, "Oh, don't worry about that. Nothing would stop me from taking on such a brilliant and fascinating patient. I can't wait to get started." Heyes grinned, just a brief flash of his teeth, but it the first time he had smiled at all since he had been unable to talk. One day after being a dummy he was brilliant again! And maybe he would be talking again soon! Or maybe not.

"Mr. Smith, the only thing I can promise you is that this won't be easy or fast. We don't really understand what is at work in aphasia. Doctors are only just barely starting to understand the anatomy of the brain. Our study is in its infancy. A doctor in Germany has made some discoveries in recent years, and I am trying to build on those. But it is slow work and the patient's part is very demanding. Are you ready for some hard work? Very, very hard work?"

Heyes looked serious and his eyes had a determined gleam. He nodded a crisp, business-like nod.

"Good!" said Dr. Leutze. "Come to my room and we'll get started right away. I have a lot of questions. Mr. Jones, if you can come along, you can help with anything that Mr. Smith can't communicate, or doesn't remember from when he was unconscious."

Leutze did have a lot of questions. They added Dr. Grauer to the group to help with answering Leutze's questions. Dr. Leutze studied Joshua's head wound and asked countless questions about its healing: the transition from being unable to understand English to being able to understand, his ability to write numbers but not letters, his ability to read but not speak, and much more. Curry was nervous about talking about the shooting – what if the doctors asked the wrong questions? But they didn't – they stayed with medical questions rather than asking about the patient's earlier background.

Leutze looked at Joshua's pages of equations with rapt fascination. Since his first effort in Cat's account book he had written out a number of new pages. "Goodness!" Leutze said as he looked at the intricate strings of numbers, then up at the man who had written them. "This is very advanced work, Mr. Smith, for someone with no college background! I'm not sure I can follow all this any longer – it's been so long since I took my college math classes." The Kid tried in vain to keep his jaw from dropping. Heyes could beat a college-educated man at math? He had always known his partner was pretty sharp, but he had no idea that anyone who really knew math would be impressed.

Dr. Grauer gave Joshua a piece of paper. He drew a shape with lots of lines and angles – some three-dimensional shape that Thaddeus had never seen before. Joshua tapped his drawing and pointed to a long equation he had written with lines of complex calculations above it. Then Leutze knew what he had drawn. "My goodness! That's a dodecahedron – a twelve faced shape with pentagons for sides! It's one of the most complex regular solids – you know, Mr. Jones, like a cube – all the sides alike. This must be the formula for the volume of a dodecahedron! Look at all the lines of figures it took to figure out that final equation. I wonder if he read it somewhere and somehow memorized it – which would be pretty amazing in itself. Mr. Smith, did you see it in a book?" Joshua pointed at the shape and nodded. Then he pointed at the lines of figures and shook his head. Then he tapped his finger on his own chest emphatically. "You saw the shape in a book?" said Leutze. "But the equations you did yourself?" Joshua nodded calmly. "If it's right, it's pretty impressive. Can I have your permission to mail this to my friend, Dr. Homer? He's a professor of mathematics in New York City."

Joshua nodded, but cautiously. He was sure he was right. Well, he was almost sure. Well, he thought he might be right. He sure hoped so. To be wrong in front of two doctors and a professor of mathematics and his partner as well would be too much. He had put hours and hours of thought into this, distracting his mind when he had nothing more constructive to do. But without a teacher at hand, he had been feeling his way in the dark. Which was pretty much how he had been trying to get back to talking – all alone in a frighteningly dark place. Now he had a teacher; now he had a chance.


	12. Chapter 12

While they waited for the answer from the professor in New York, Joshua started work with Dr. Leutze. They were locked in Leutze's hotel room for hours, from morning till dinner time or even later. When Heyes came to his room that night, Curry was waiting at the door. He looked at his partner anxiously. Heyes was grey with weariness and his steps faltered. Curry was about to say, "Well?", when Heyes collapsed so suddenly that Curry hardly had time to catch him before he hit the floor. Heyes woke up quickly, but he was utterly exhausted. And evidently worried. He ate a late dinner, in silence, avoiding Curry's eyes. What on earth was the Doctor doing with Heyes, or to him? One thing was for sure – it was no use to ask Heyes. Curry was reluctant to ask the doctor – he didn't want to meddle. It was, after all, Heyes' health and Heyes' decision.

The next day, at the end of the session, Heyes looked nearly as exhausted, although he didn't fall off his feet. But he was just as silent. And the following day was the same. Heyes' eyes got duller and wearier with each session. But he didn't give up. He kept trying whatever it was they were doing, alone in that room, just the two of them, Smith and Leutze.

Leutze came to Thaddeus in the hotel's back room during his lunch break the next day. The doctor stroked his heat beard and thoughtfully said, "Now, Jones, I want to warn you. If we do start to make progress, try not to react too much. The emotional strain on an aphasia patient is terrible. Your excitement could make it much worse – it would cause a lot more pressure on Smith. Many feel they aren't even human if they can't talk. At first, they can't even think in words. It's terribly frustrating and confusing. To find the right way to think so they can deal with words again is so hard. It can be impossible. It just depends on what the damage to the brain really is. And it can actually get worse, emotionally, for a patient if people around him get too excited when he can say a word or two. Some people can get back a word or two and never get any more. Ever. So don't get your hopes up too much and don't get too excited if anything does happen."

Curry couldn't contain his curiosity any longer, "But what're you doing with Smith, Doc.? That first night – did you know that he collapsed? He fell right into my arms – out cold! What kind of 'work' does that to a man?"

The doctor shook his head regretfully. "Hard work, Mr. Jones. It takes the most intense concentration – a unique kind of mental work. You know how, when you've been trying hard to solve a problem, you can suddenly realize how tired you are after only an hour, or even a few minutes? Think about doing that for hours on end! I keep trying to stop Smith from doing too much, but he just refuses to stop work until he's too tired to possibly go on any longer. If I won't work with him, he tries on his own. So I don't have much choice but to stay and guide him. I just hope he doesn't do any lasting damage to himself – or to me! It's hard for me, too – but nothing like it is for him!"

Curry shook his head. Heyes had always been an impressive guy, at least in some ways, to his younger cousin - reluctant as the Kid often was to tell Heyes this. Now the Kid could start to appreciate that in one of Heyes' darkest hours, he was putting up the bravest fight of his life.

When Heyes came through the back room that evening, late for dinner again, Curry was waiting for him. It was hard for the Kid to look like he was only casually interested in how his partner was, but he tried. He pretended to be going over the account book and just looked over his shoulder to ask, "You getting anywhere, Heyes?"

Several long, silent seconds went by. Curry couldn't turn away from the struggle visible in Heyes' features.

Then, a low, hoarse voice came, with a visible effort: "Yes."

The Kid caught his breath. He had thought he might never hear his partner's voice again. And now he wasn't supposed to react? Heyes could talk! He absolutely couldn't believe that "Yes" was the only word his partner would ever say. He would be the old silver-tongued Heyes again, the Kid was sure of it. Curry took his partner's hand in a congratulatory handshake, but didn't say a word. Heyes closed his eyes and turned away in shame at his continuing weakness, but turned back with a look of determined hope.

The next day a letter arrived from New York for Dr. Leutze. He gathered Joshua and Thaddeus and Cat and Dr. Grauer in his room to share the contents of the letter. It was from Dr. Homer in New York. He had confirmed that Joshua Smith had the formula for the volume of a dodecahedron exactly right and the calculations to figure it out were all correct as well. Of all the long rows of equations, every sign and digit was correct, although the way of coming to the final equation was, as the professor put it, "a bit eccentric."

Both doctors were excited. Dr. Leutze exclaimed, "That is just stunning. I can't believe it. With almost no training, he can do this. He's a mathematical genius!" Dr. Grauer agreed. Heyes flashed a sparkling grin at the Kid. Heyes tried to say something, but all he could get out was "t – t - t." Heyes went from blushing in triumph to blushing in shame and looked at the floor with both fists clasped to his head in frustration.

But the Kid didn't skip a beat. He had guessed what Heyes would want to say right now. "Yeah," said Curry just as if his partner had spoken a sentence, "You did tell me so. Over and over. For years. Alright, so you're a genius. Big deal."

Curry folded his arms and looked peeved. Both doctors and Cat laughed at the mock-solemn Thaddeus. Heyes laughed, too - the booming laugh that Curry hadn't heard in so very long. Curry found himself laughing, too. He just couldn't stay mad at Heyes. Not when the news was so good!


	13. Chapter 13

Or was the news all good? The following morning Leutze came to Thaddeus and Joshua and Cat, who were gathered in the kitchen to clean up after serving breakfast to the hotel denizens. The New York doctor look sorry to tell them, "Wonderful as it has been to work with you, Mr. Smith, I've got to return to my practice in New York. There are patients there waiting for me. They've already waited more than a week past when I told them I would return. They'll be losing progress if I don't get back to them very soon."

Heyes and Curry and Cat all looked stricken. How could they give up when Heyes had just started to get better?

Dr. Leutze smiled uncertainly at Joshua and asked, "Mr. Smith, would you consider going to New York City with me? I would be glad to add you as a patient at my clinic for aphasia patients. I'm sure I can get funding to support your treatment. You are doing so well, so quickly, and you are clearly so promising. It really should be easy to convince one or more of my regular supporters to give the necessary funds not just for treatment but for room and board and other expenses. Will you think about it, Mr. Smith? I don't know how long it will take, and I can't guarantee anything, but will you come and try?"

Heyes looked back and forth between Dr. Leutze and the Kid and Cat in open desperation. New York City? Could he go there without the Kid? He couldn't ask the Kid to leave Cat and go to New York City! In the great eastern city, after all, they had wanted posters and law men just like they did in the West. And what would the Kid do in New York? He couldn't just hang around looking after Heyes. He had to make a living, which he could do in relative safety at Christy's Place. With Sheriff Wilde perhaps winking at their wanted status, since he had seen the two men enough to recognize them and yet had never turned them in, the Kid might be safe in Louisville. But in New York? And Cat had her home and business in Louisville – she couldn't just pick up and leave. And she was part of the package with the Kid, now.

But for Heyes to leave the Kid and go to someplace so strange and so far away? To be alone when he was so vulnerable? To leave the one man who understood him even without words? Heyes really was frightened. They could see that in his eyes as he looked back and forth between the Kid and Leutze. He was desperate to work with Dr. Leutze and get better, but he was just plain scared to go on his own.

The Kid looked into Joshua's eyes and read the questions there. "Joshua," she said. "You have to do it. I can't come. The doctor's supporters won't be paying for me – I can't ask that." Heyes nodded – he understood. "But if Dr. Leutze can get the money to treat you, you have to go with him. You've got to! You've got to learn how to talk again! You can't let anything stop you." Heyes had at first had the instinctive reaction that he couldn't leave the Kid; he had always felt that he took care of his younger cousin. But rationally, he knew that as he was, he couldn't take care of anyone – not even himself. So his leaving would be no hardship for the Kid, except that Heyes guessed his partner would miss him. He sure would miss the Kid! And he would miss Cat, who had become almost part of the family in the last weeks.

Heyes turned to the Kid with the question in his eyes – was the Kid really sure? Their eyes met and they were sure. Heyes turned to Dr. Leutze and shook his hand.


	14. Chapter 14

As Cat and the Kid were getting ready to turn out the lamp in the room they now shared, Cat could tell that her man was upset. He was tense and distracted. Cat gently said to Curry, stroking his shoulder, "Kid, I asked you twice already, did you lock up? Didn't you hear me?"

"Yes, honey. I locked up. I think I did. Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me." I just can't concentrate.

"I know what's wrong . You're going to miss, him, but Heyes'll be fine, Jed. He's been through an awful lot in the last month and he's figured it all out. He'll figure out New York, too, with the best aphasia doctor in the country looking after him."

Curry wiggled settling into bed, "Hah! He's figured it out with my help - and yours! Heyes can't hardly find both his boots without my help."

Cat kissed Curry on the cheek, "I do know him pretty well by now and I think he's got more sense than you give him credit for."

The Kid sighed and turned out the lamp. "I'm sorry to contradict you, sweetheart, but you don't know the first thing about the man. You've never met Heyes, not really. He's been out of his head most of the time, and not sayn' a word. Silence - that just ain't Heyes. When he's right he's the biggest talker I ever met in my whole life. He lives on dreams and theories and ideas and hot air. He says he likes it when I worry 'cause I look after him better. He's had me to look after him and back him up since he was two. Or, well, as soon as I wasn't a baby. God only knows what he'll do on his own."

Cat grinned indulgently at the Kid. "He must be happy now, 'cause you're worrying like a mother hen. I bet he'd say he's looked after you your whole life and he'll be worrying about how you'll do without him. At least he knows you've got me to keep you in line." Cat put her arms around the Kid's bare chest. He took her in his arms and kissed her.


	15. Chapter 15

But the next morning as Curry came into his hotel room a couple of hours before the train east was due to leave, Heyes was uncertain again. Something was bothering him and he was having a hard time communicating it to the Kid. He pointed to himself and down the street at something and to where Leutze's room was. He couldn't get across what he wanted to say. He was going red with fury at his inability.

The Kid thought and thought and then it came to him. The place down the street that Heyes was pointing at was the Sherriff's office. "You want to tell Dr. Leutze your real name?" Heyes nodded tensely. "Are you losing your grip?" Curry asked, way too loud. Leutze's room was right next door – Heyes shushed his partner quickly.

Curry went on in a furious whisper, "When did you go and get all honorable about telling the truth? That's rich, that is. Did you ever think that if you tell him who you are, you're also telling him who I am? In case you hadn't noticed, I'm in love with Cat Christy. I don't want to move too fast, but I am starting to think about things. With the Sheriff looking the other way, maybe I could even stay here with Cat for good. If the word about us doesn't get out and spoil everything. When you're all healed up, you could come back and do the books and manage the saloon floor for us, if you want to." Heyes looked his gratitude at the Kid, but his partner had more to say.

"I looked into Sheriff Wilde. I'm sure he knows who we are. I remember him from someplace. I think he might have been part of the posse that chased us out of Denver after we robbed the Merchants Bank. I saved his life a couple of weeks ago and I know damn well he recognized me.

But there's this, too. He's courting the Widow Stuart, who was married to the man who made the biggest strike around here. He made a fortune on that gold and now she has it. If the Sheriff marries that lady, $20,000 would be nothing to him. He could just leave me and you be, and never miss the cash. Unless somebody goes around causing trouble and pointing out that he's looking the other way. That could get him thrown in jail himself! So no, you ain't gonna tell Dr. Leutze who you really are and I sure ain't gonna tell him! You might trust him not to turn us in, but it hasn't always turned out that great when you've trusted a man's character. Just think what $20,000 could do for Leutze's clinic! You may be a genius at math, but sometimes you've ain't got the sense that God gave geese!"

Heyes shrugged in resignation and went back to packing his saddle bags. He would be going to New York City as Joshua Smith after all. Honesty wasn't a possible policy for a man who couldn't write a single letter or say more than two words, neither one of which was Hannibal or Heyes.

The End – for the Moment

The next story in the sequence is, you guessed it: "Hannibal Heyes Goes to New York."


End file.
